The present invention relates to event management in a data processing system, and in particular to an apparatus and method for attributing a seasonal fault to maintenance activity.
Data center and network management disciplines to date have focused extensively on fault and root cause analysis processes, tools and best practices. When events occur in a data center, an SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) or other notification is sent to an event manager (for example IBM's Netcool OMNIbus or Netcool Operations Insight). The event may be de-duplicated, correlated and enriched. It may be handled via a policy enforced by a rules engine. It may be used to automatically create a ticket for a help desk. Events and tickets are the backbone of fault management. Anything that reduces the number of events, and the number of tickets without affecting the performance and availability of services in the data center is very easily mapped to reduced cost, reduced mean time to repair (MTTR), and increased return on investment (ROI).